With that in mind, here are some principles that can serve to either keep you king or help you be a king in your business, king of cash flow.

Education.

Start with yourself. Are positive cash flows meaningful to you as the organization’s leader? Why?  Do you measure it? Would you be able to answer, if asked, how much cash-flow do you generate each month?  How long would it take for you to find that answer?

Can you explain what it may mean to everyone in your organization? (survival, ownership, control, freedom, growth, new equipment, new hires, no layoffs, incentives, R&D…)

Are you not sure you want feedback from others? Read on.

Connection.

Connect the dots. Connect the lines on the org chart. Connect your strategy. Connect its execution. Connect their tasks. Connect their success.

Connect what they do and why to how it adds or subtracts to generating positive cash-flow.

Connect what they do and why to what it means for them personally. See above.

It’s one thing to offer a classroom definition of cash-flow and its sources. It becomes entirely different when you connect your strategy, its execution, their tasks, their strengths, their successes and non-successes, to generating cash-flow and the options it provides.

Recognition.

Recognition by our peers, family and our leaders is at or near the top of personal motivators. Any organization, any size, any culture*.

That motivator applies to increasing cash flows in your organization. Recognize the successes of everyone in your organization for how they contribute to reaching positive cash flows.

Some successes will add cash by increasing revenues. Some successes will save cash by cutting costs. Recognize them.

Engagement

How? Ask.

• What would happen if we …?
• What if we…?
• How could we…?
• What is our reasonable aspiration or hoped-for future that Erika Andersen talks about in her book Being Strategic.

Operative word is ‘we’. Everyone’s participation then provides theirs answer for these questions:

• What’s in it for me.
• Why should I care?
• Why should I believe?

Inspiration

Now you’re aligned. Now you’re engaged. Now you’re learning. Now you’re finding more solutions. Now you’ve inspired. Now everyone’s inspired.

Repetition.

You will repeatedly turn to these principles. Success brings greater challenges. Greater challenges need greater solutions.   Now you have a culture of connection as Michael Lee Stallard talks about, a culture of continuous learning as Gary Harpst calls it.

Reminder

It’s an endless journey. You, the plural you, will need each others help.

* Broad generalizations like this are always dangerous. I usually recoil from a post when I read them. I make it here for brevity’s sake.

* Operating cash flow may be the more accurate term here. The term cash flow can include outside sources of cash: investments, loans, etc. But these sources can come at the cost of being the king, your culture, your brand, your company.

Links:

Being Strategic: Plan for Success, Out-Think Your Competitors, Stay Ahead of Change by Erika Andersen

Six Disciplines of Excellence by Gary Harpst

Fired Up or Burned Out, by Michael Lee Stallard

iStock Photo from ivan_7316

The post 7 Principles for Cash Flow Kings appeared first on Small Business Trends.

Are you looking at social media in the same way? Clap your hands and on goes your social media ‘campaign’. Clap your hands again and it’s turned off.

Clap-clap  and you slap on a social media campaign. The young-kid does a Facebook page and some cute tweets. Somebody ghostwrites a blog for you or you write a post oh, every month or two. And you do something…not sure what or why, but something that someone says is cute and funny and email it to your customers.

BAM! There it is. Social media.

And you sit back and wait…and wait. And after awhile,  if you remember your social media campaign…you realize nothing has happened:

• No ‘conversations’ have occurred, whatever those were;
• No referrals,
• No sustained increase in traffic to your site,
• The number of prospects has not increased,
• Nor have the number of referrals.
• Conversion rates stay abysmally low.

And you’re looking for that someone who said ‘social media’.

And you clap-clap and it’s turned off. Blog comes down. The young kid is fired. Tweets stop and the Facebook page dies of neglect with minimal notice or complaint from its members.

And no one’s world is worse for the wear and tear.

Or…

Clap-clap. Your social media effort is successful.

• Your company’s  Facebook page is jumping with updates and comments, likes and photos.

• Your blog is regularly updated by you and your members, maybe you have some guest bloggers, too. Maybe they are customers or vendors?

• Your Twitter account is growing with real followers having real conversations about your products, your company…even you.

• Other resources like Yelp, LinkedIn, FriendFeed, YouTube…and more are used.

Now, more people are talking about your products, your services, what they like about it, what they WOULD like about it if you heard them. They suggest things you could change, things to improve…what if the packaging was easier to open or had this feature or didn’t have that feature.

Now, more people talk about what …they…DON’T like about it. The statistics show these folks have more conversations on this topic than any other topic. Misery loves company. It loves community, too. And now you have offered them a community, at your expense…literally.

Now what are you going to do?

• Clap-clap and that last conversation goes away?
• Clap-clap and those suggestions can be ignored or edited as it implies your leadership lacks vision or you cannot innovate? Or there is a deadline expected for these changes? One you cannot meet?

Your employees, executives, and managers, partners and vendors, investors and board can see that conversation.  Dollars to donuts, Homer, I bet they have had many of these same ideas. Or, they have wanted to have many of these same conversations. With you. With themselves.

Or they are threatened by those conversations. Maybe your culture does not embrace these conversations. Maybe you are threatened as well to see such an open conversation shared openly and transparently with and without your permission. And maybe you are worried what happens when that conversation comes in house…

At this point, you discover the clap-off feature for social media doesn’t work.  It’s like you’re at the opera. You clap and cheer for the opening act. And your key chain starts beeping…and beeping…and beeping.

Once the conversation starts with your prospects and customers, their referrals and your employees, your partners and vendors, board and shareholders…no amount of clapping and calling to order, in-person or digitally, can stop it. You can repress it. You can issue internal company policies. You can fire employees, terminate partners. You can ignore your customers, take those sites down, stop tweeting.

However, those conversations still take place. They  will only move to a more receptive audience: your competitor.  It will be your employees, customers, partners and vendors carrying that conversation to your competitors: current or startup.

Social media, transparent and open conversations, tend to be like the Borg. They absorb everything and everyone one in their path. Resistance is futile. Prepare for it now. Here are but a few ideas to consider before you clap-on for a social media…thing, strategy or campaign, whatever people call it.

Start with those closest to you. That’s your employees. Do you have an open, transparent, culture? How do you respond to failure or criticism? How do you respond to a new idea? Is everyone, including you the leader, prepared for an onslought of feedback…should it happen?

What do you offer that is worth discussing? You will find out what is interesting when you join this conversation. Interesting does not mean appealing.  Interesting means how does your audience answer these three questions with your offering:

• What’s in it for them?
• Why should they care?
• Why should they believe?

So, where do you turn to for answers?

• The first place to look for answers are your employees.

• The next place to look are their conversations with customers.

• The next place to look is your customers. Call them.

• Then your vendors and partners.

All of them can answer that question. And it will be different than what you expect. Probably.

Are you prepared for change? Do you have the systems to handle change? How quickly can you change a feature?  How quickly can you add a product? How quickly can you address questions and concerns, rants and raves, vigilantes and evangelists?

Can you let go? The ‘you’ is both you personally and the you of your company. The conversation remains in your hands. But, now there are many hands.

This post has gone on too long. That may be the point. Social media starts a conversation that once started does not stop even at the end of a post. That’s why comments on a blog post are so simple and powerful.

But I recommend you ask yourselves now what is being said about your offering by those who talk it about now. Social media will only accelerate the spread of that message. It won’t change the message.  Social media can no more change your message than lipstick can change a pig’s face.  Make sure you like the answer to some of these questions before you clap your hands and slap on a social media…something… for your company. Once you have turned it on, you can’t clap your hands and turn it off.

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About the author: Zane Safrit’s passion is small business and the operations excellence required to deliver a product that creates word-of-mouth, customer referrals and instills pride in those whose passion created it. He previously served as CEO of a small business. Zane’s blog can be found at Zane Safrit.

istockphoto from BillCourtney42

The post Is Your Social Media Clap-on, Clap-off? appeared first on Small Business Trends.

A poll by The Work Foundation found that 40% of workers had more skills than their job required …Huddersfield Examiner

Here’s more. A recent study by Gallup that’s discussed in a post by Eric Brody on his blog, Healthy Conversations:

In a recent article on MarketingProfs, Gallup research of 300,000 businesses indicated that 75-80% of employees are achieving much less and feeling far less enthusiastic about their work than they could be. If all your employees were “fully engaged,” …. your profits would jump 40%. Eric Brody, Healthy Conversations

Small business needs 40% more productivity and profits. Why? There is the obvious, micro-economic, reason. Every business needs 40% more productivity and profits.

But, there’s  the macro-economic reason too. It’s as obvious, too. Our economy depends on small business to create to the new jobs. These new jobs are required before we  drive out of this recession. Right now, small business may not be performing that role so well.

We all know this. But, just to remind us all and add a little urgency, here’s a few  signs:

• A slow, possibly uneven or patchy, economic recovery. Forbes
• Another jobless recovery? Wall Street Journal
• Small Business Remains the Top Source of Layoffs, Christian Science Monitor

Here are 6 steps to boost productivity and profits by up to 40%. Take any one of them. Or, just take one.  But get started today. Your business needs the boost. Our economy needs the boost. Your neighbors need the jobs.

1). Imagine.

Imagine  your company  with a 40% boost in profits and productivity.

What are the metrics you’d use to:

• measure your progress.
• alert you when you’ve reached your target

What goal remains elusive now?

Would a 40% increase in productivity or profit bring you closer to reaching it?

Erika Andersen describes this process in her book Being Strategic. Great book.  I reviewed it in a post I wrote last week and published today.

You can listen to my conversation with Erika Andersen here.

2). Learn.

Two of the best books on uncovering and unleashing the strengths of your greatest asset, those in your organization, are by Marcus Buckingham:

• First, Break All the Rules
• Now, Discover Your Strengths

Read them.  Learn from them. Learn how matching your employees’ strengths with their job description and recognizing them and putting them in a position to grow is the key to your growth.

3). Ask.

Ask those in your company. Ask them:

• What they could do better,
• How could they do it better,
• Why could they do it better.

Keep asking:

• When do they feel the strongest, clearest, happiest?
• What are they doing?
• When are they doing it?
• What more do they need to have this experience more frequently?

Ask your customers, too.  Time is precious, yours and theirs. Use the most efficient customer-survey. It is the 1-question Ultimate Question Survey that generates their Net Promoter Score and collectively, yours as a company.

4). Get Your Freak On.

Dave Rendall at his Freak Factor blog  suggests the flip side of one’s weakness is one’s strength.  It’s the setting that matters. For instance, if you have a loud opinionated employee who can never stop talking…find a place where loud opinions constantly shared are desired, helpful. Everyone will thank you. Likewise, if you have one employee who is obsessive about details, find a place where details need obsessing.

You can listen to my conversation with Dave Rendall here.

5). Recognize. Immediately. Meaningfully.

Recognize excellence, strength, success…Do it immediately. Make that recognition meaningful. Meaningful means meaningful to the recipient.     Steps 2 and 3 will help you find those ways.

Recognize also means to celebrate. Celebrate your successes regularly, immediately.

6). Make the Party about Their Life.

Make sure you give your stakeholders one unique reason to celebrate their life, to look good for their stakeholders.  ( Tip of the hat to Kathy Sierra. )

7) Measure the results.

Measure as you grow. Change the metrics as you grow. As you engage everyone in this conversation, your metrics, quantitatively and qualitatively, will change. These changes will serve as  both a reason to celebrate and a future baseline to exceed.

Note: Each step here is a financially risk-free investment. Financial investments are earned as a reward only after the accomplishments are recognized. What are we waiting on?  We, our companies and  your communities, need us boost productivity and profits by 40% in order to create the jobs to drive us out of this recession.

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About the author: Zane Safrit’s passion is small business and the operations excellence required to deliver a product that creates word-of-mouth, customer referrals and instills pride in those whose passion created it. He previously served as CEO of a small business. Zane’s blog can be found at Zane Safrit.

The post 7 Steps to Boost Productivity and Profits by Up to 40% appeared first on Small Business Trends.

Are you scratching your head with these questions, regularly, wondering which report is the right report to read at the right time.

You know reports are important. ( Well, hello?) Of course. But considering how many companies…ignore their reports eventually to their demise, it seemed important to say again. (And maybe you’ve waivered in the past.)

Here’s my suggestions for reports to review and how often.  There are books and college courses prepared to discuss each report and how to use them.

It is not the definitive list. Add your suggestions. We can create a list that could become a definitive list.  There are two categories:

1. Financial Statements
2. Operations Reports

FINANCIAL STATEMENTS

For these I’ll turn to Scot Justice, CPA and MBA. Scot has been in the trenches and has the war wounds every small business owner suffers.  He blogs at VirtualCFO.  His Twitter handle is VirtualCFO. His post The Financial Statements Small Business Owners and Entrepreneurs Need to Use is an excellent post. He lists 4 reports. I’ll add my thoughts on how frequently you should review them and why.

Income Statement - Shows the revenue, expenses, and the profit/loss of your company for a specific period of time.

Frequency: Quarterly. Scot may disagree here. Income statements are most important for your accountant to help you with your tax filings and SEC filings. But, other reports, particularly the cash-flow statement or sources and uses of cash report, more accurately report the results of your operations, particularly those of a small business or startup.

Balance Sheet – Shows the financial position of your company on a specific date. This includes assets, liabilities, and owner’s equity. (Scot Justice)  Included in those assets is your cash balance. Included in your liabilities are your obligations and their approximate due date under the headings of Long-Term (more than one year) and Short-Term (within one year).

Frequency: Monthly – quick review to manage your cash balances and short-term liability payment schedule. Quarterly: detailed review for future financial planning needs and to insure consistent, accurate, reporting from other reports.

* Cash-Flow Statement.*  Cha-Ching! This report is the most important report for small businesses and startups. Small businesses and startups have more difficulty generating the cash needed to fund their operations from traditional resources.

Cash is king. Cash-flows make you kings or paupers.

Cash may be a very close second most important asset for a startup or small business. Second behind its human assets. Why? Human assets, your company’s talent, are the assets that deliver your brand. However, no cash and your talent is forced to focus on finding it, not growing the brand.

This report would be the one report to study if you could study only one report. It is that valuable.

Frequency: Monthly: In detail. (Daily review would not be too frequent.)  I drove my accountant crazy drilling into its details. And doing that helped us replace cash-flows from dwindling retail prices as our industry became commoditized. There’s gold in that cash-flow statement. Look very closely in your cash-flow statement. You’ll find it.

Make yourself VERY familiar with your cash-flow statement. Be its BFF and I mean forever. Do that. And you’ll remain king of your domain.

Statement of Owner’s Equity - Shows the equity you have in your company on a specific date. Equity is basically the value of the investment you have in your company. – Scot Justice

Those are your 4 financial reports.

OPERATIONAL REPORTS 

There are 5. These you should review, in detail, monthly. Compare them with the results from last month, last quarter, last year.  Why? They are the proverbial wellspring source for the numbers that show next month in your cash-flow statement.

* Conversion Rate

What percentage of leads or prospects does your team convert to paying customers? By team, I include Customer Service and Accounting, IT and Executives, along with Sales and Marketing.

Which sales person generates the highest percentage? Why? How? What can you share with others to improve their results?

Which sales person generates the lowest percentage? Why? How? Have you trained them properly, motivated them correctly, incentivized them meaningfully? Have you asked? If you answer yes to all, maybe this partnership is not productive.

* Customer Churn

See above.

Also, look to their reasons for why they left your company.  You do ask them why they left, right?

* Leads

How many? From what source? What is the result? A new customer? A recurring customer? Customers with high percentages of bad debt?

* Referrals

Sustaining businesses generate high numbers of referrals. From that perspective, your purpose is to generate referrals. Do that well and you sustain your operations. the impact of a growing number of referrals is reflected in your leads, your customer churn and your conversion rate.

It is also reflected in your employees’ motivation. Referrals serve as a tangible source of positive feedback that is very meaningful to your employees.

* Customer Service Requests

How many? What reason? How frequently do you see that reason? Why? Email or phone call? Phone calls are used when it’s urgent.  What results? How many emails and phone replies are required?

Make your customers happy and their response is reported in your Referrals report.  Make your customers unhappy, repeatedly, and their responses are included in your Customer Churn report.  Reports tell the brand’s story. Understand their language, understand your story and understand the story of everyone in your company. Understand your reports; understand the doors that are open and closed to you.

Reports tell the past, present and future for your brand. The past is told with the decisions your team and your partners make every day. The present is the snapshot tally of all those decisions, made every minute, that become a pattern. And that pattern is recognized in these reports. The future is up to you. What’s done is done. But these results in these reports point out the distance that remains to reach your goal.

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About the author: Zane Safrit’s passion is small business and the operations excellence required to deliver a product that creates word-of-mouth, customer referrals and instills pride in those whose passion created it. He previously served as CEO of a small business. Zane’s blog can be found at Zane Safrit.

The post Which Report is the Important Report? appeared first on Small Business Trends.

Word-of-mouth is the most effective means to advertise your brand. Too much data exists to recite here shows customer word-of-mouth is more effective, more cost-effective.

How do you do it? How do you inspire your customers to tell others the glory of your story? Do you hire an agency to make a funny cartoon? Or a silly video? Or is forward to a friend links on an email campaign good enough?

Remember this: Word-of-mouth starts with your story. Your brand story.  That’s your  story you give your customers to tell for you, about you, from their experience with you. It’s an unique story. You create a new version with each customer and each experience they have with you.

It’s a collaborative effort. They bring their story (their needs, their desires, the meaning they hope you provide, the solution you need to provide, their expectations, frustrations.) And you bring your story (your employees, their commitment, the resources you provide, your partners, your vendors, your purpose.) The two stories meld, or don’t, each time you two meet. Email, phone, website forum, ad, press release, little league sponsorship, service problem, billing error, lost order, missed shipment…cool innovation, surprises, testimonials.

Where your two stories meet is where word-of-mouth is created. Every time.

You can only control your story. Here’s a list of some, not all, the things you can do to create word-of-mouth for your business. And do it consistently.

Find out what your customers say now. Survey your customers with The Ultimate Question Survey. That’s a 3-question survey.

The first question is this: Would you recommend us to your friends and colleagues? On a scale of 0 – 10, with 10 being very…how likely would be to recommend us to a friend or colleague? Their answers to this and the other 2 questions equal your Net Promoter Score.

Are you generating Net Promoters or Net Detractors? You should find that out before you create a word-of-mouth campaign that will accelerate the spread of your story.

Fred Reichheld wrote The Ultimate Question: Driving Good Profits and True Growth. Buy it. Read it. Do it.

Do more of what your customers like. That survey will tell you why and when and where they recommend you to their friends and colleagues. Do more  of that which inspires them to tell more.

Stop doing what makes them unhappy. The survey will tell you if and how you make them unhappy.  Stop doing that.

Ask your employees. They write your story every day. They make it a best-seller, or not. All day. Use the same survey for them.

Do the same for them. Do more of what makes them recommend their company to their friends. Stop doing anything else.

Review your P&L reports. Are your sales going up or down?  A word-of-mouth, viral ad, campaign will accelerate the results.

Why? More people will tell your story. And if that story is a story of a company whose customers are abandoning it, then more people  will hear that story. If your sales are going up, find out why. Do more of that.

Review your sales-by-item reports. See above. This is the granular detail, the sentences and punctuation, of the story your customers are telling about you and their experiences with you.

Hire A-Players. Your employees, your number one asset, are your brand-builders. Hire the best. Then you have the asset to create the best. Brad Smart and his Topgrading methods are sure-fire ways to find, keep and grow A-players. And remove C-Players.

Remove C-Players. Your company has changed. Your story has matured.  The A-Players who told your story so eloquently now stumble and mumble.  Or, the C-Player auditioned beautifully. And now you realize they are illiterate.  Motivate, train or coach the C-Player to become an A-player. Or remove them. You owe your A-players the best colleagues.  And only the best colleagues.

Motivate your employees with incentives that matter to them. Ask them what is meaningful. You may be surprised at what and how little it will cost. And how important that incentive is to their life. Then make it possible for them to achieve those incentives.

Connect their meaningful incentives to the goals of their company. Share those goals with your A-Players. Explain why they are important to reach. To do that you must answer these three questions your employees will have:

• What’s in it for me?
• Why should I care?
• Why should I believe?

Stay out of their way. Do your employees generate revenue? Do they lower expenses? Do they make each other happy? Do they make customers happy? Stay out of their way while they do that. Stop them when they stop. You have incentivized them. It should be…easy.

Give them the tools and resources they need. That means ask them. That means understand their day, their task, the tools you have provided them. Understand how these tools and resources meet your goals. Or what you need, instead. And then find better tools and resources.

Make employee reviews a celebration. Celebrate their strengths and accomplishments. Find ways and tools and areas where their strengths are on display.

Celebrate failure. Ok, not like Yippee we crashed the server today! But, acknowledge it, allow it, recognize it. And learn from it. That’s a key step to creating a culture of innovation, of constantly generating new ideas.  Cultures that allow for failure are cultures that allow engagement. Engagement can add 3-5% to your operating results. Is that worth it?

Use social media yourself. The operative word is yourself. Oh sure, it’s awkward. You stumble. You make mistakes. That shows you are a real, authentic, human being. We humans connect with our colleagues: real, authentic human beings. And,  the social media community is supportive and forgiving where the efforts are genuine, offered by real authentic human beings.

There is no message more unique and genuine than the voice of a CEO in their own blog, in their own writing. Write your own blog. (For goodness sakes, write your own blog. Otherwise skip it. )

Or use Twitter. Join the millions of people who’ve looked like fools at least once in their life. It’s a party.    And join them as they connect with millions of customers, prospects, partners, vendors, ideas, innovators solutions.

Know your community. What do they need? What solutions are they looking for? Find and deliver. Be a part of their lives. Jeffrey Summers, CEO and founder of Restaurant Coaching Solutions LLC, shared that in a conversation we had recently.

These things, and more, form your story. Finish this list first. Then look at the story you’ve written. And if you consistently pursue and execute them, your story can be consistent. Consistent stories build consistent word-of-mouth.

Then see if you need outside help to accelerate the spread of your story through the mouths and communities of your customers. And employees.

There’s more. But this is a good start.  After all, this is a blog. This is a conversation. What do you do to create word-of-mouth for your business?

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About the author: Zane Safrit’s passion is small business and the operations excellence required to deliver a product that creates word-of-mouth, customer referrals and instills pride in those whose passion created it. He previously served as CEO of a small business. Zane’s blog can be found at Zane Safrit.

The post 16 Things You Can Do Yourself to Create Word-of-Mouth for Your Business appeared first on Small Business Trends.

This may surprise you. But, we wanted to thank you for our meeting yesterday.

We know you’re busy in any economy. And, now in this economy we know your schedule is intense.

That’s why we appreciated you taking the time to meet with us.

We also wanted to recognize specific ways you made this meeting with us more enjoyable, more productive, and even more inspiring.

• We were prepared. We had received the meetings agenda before the meeting. You took the time to prepare it and send it to us so that we had the time to review and discuss and prepare our thoughts, questions, areas we wanted to pay attention to.

• You greeted us. You smiled and greeted each of us as we came into the conference room. I know that added 10-15 more minutes to your schedule. But, it showed how important this meeting was and how important each of us were to you and the company.  Thank you.

• You started on time. You respected our time with a prompt start to the meeting. That helped with the focus and it sets the tone for other meetings, also.

• Trusted us to be adults. This was refreshing. You trusted us to react, respond, as adults. You shared confidential information, you brought us into the conversation and asked for our suggestions. Thank you. You may have noticed the excitement as we left. You’ve stirred lots of ideas and renewed energy. That turned our challenge into an exciting opportunity for us to be even stronger.

• Your measured responses. There was some anger and frustration shared during the meeting. And your patience and listening and acceptance showed your respect for them, compassion for them and now’s the time to move forward. You diffused it.

• You ended the meeting on time.  Thank you.

• Created a wiki to continue the conversation. There were so many good ideas shared. And so many more will come up before the next meeting. And some problems will emerge. And we can capture them all, continue the thinking process, with everyone at any and all times now with the wiki you set up for us to join.

Thank you.

Before the meeting there was maybe doubts and fears. People were withdrawing. And now, there’s excitement, energy, a little fear, still. But that fear is minimal now; it’s more like the tingling you have on your first bungee cord jump or skydive. And, we’re turning back to being enthusiastic, hopeful, motivated.

Best regards,

All of us, including you now.

QUESTIONS for READERS:

• What would you do to inspire this sentiment?

• What would it do for your company if you did?

• What would it do for those in your company, your community, your partners and vendors, your customers?

• Would it be worth it?

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About the author: Zane Safrit’s passion is small business and the operations excellence required to deliver a product that creates word-of-mouth, customer referrals and instills pride in those whose passion created it. He previously served as CEO of a small business. Zane’s blog can be found at Zane Safrit.

The post Dear CEO: Thank You for This Meeting appeared first on Small Business Trends.

• Listen to your customers
• Talk with your employees
• Read Your Reports

I’ve blogged separately about the first two.

Now, let’s talk about your employees. They’re the ones who create your brand, execute your strategy, build your business.

Listening to your employees is the number 1.1 task for CEOs.  Your company depends on this conversation.

It’s importance parallels that importance of listening to your customers.

I listed listening to your customers as number one priority and explained there why it is a slightly higher priority than listening to your employees. The operative word is slight and it’s ever-so.

The ever-so slight preference for listening with your customers over employees is only because we can only do one thing at a time. And…your customers are the final arbiter of your success. You start there and work back.

But, work back quickly to your employees. You see your employees are the ones who create your customers.

• Are your customers evangelists or vigilantes?
• Do they refer their friends or warn them off?
• Are they repeat buyers or one-hit wonders?

Your employees create, reinforce and sustain those definitions of your customers, for your customers.

And, never forget that your employees are listening to you. They’re listening to you for answers to these three questions:

• What’s in it for me?
• Why should I believe?
• Why should I care?

Those answers are delivered by you in everything you say and do to communicate your Purpose, Your Mission and Your Vision.

Those answers motivate them….to volunteer their passion, energy, solutions, patience, initiative. Mike Wagner of White Rabbit Group pointed out that employees become volunteers, now, only after they’ve been inspired them to bring their passion, energy, solutions, patience…initiative, leadership to the day.

• Employees arrive on time and leave on time.
• Volunteers arrive early, leave late.

• Employees fufill the terms of their contracts
• Volunteers build movements, create followers, innovate new products which lead to new companies which lead to more employees.

How do you listen to your employees/volunteers?

First off, honor the ears to mouth ratio. That’s a ratio of 2:1. Listen twice as much as you speak. Tough habit to learn. You’re a leader. Leaders don’t arise from their silence.

But now, you’re a leader. And you want, need, more leaders with more solutions. You want to create opportunities for others to lead. Listen twice as much as you speak.

Stop by daily and say hi.  Don’t talk about work unless they bring it up. Talk about their interests, their hobbies, their goals, their parking spot, their drive to work…and you know what these are, because you’ve listened.

It’s not all about work. This is tricky.  All work and no play make for…employees, not volunteers. Find what else interests them. Include it in your discussions. Then find ways to include those interests during the day. Creative solutions arise when the analytical side of the brain relaxes. Helping everyone find solutions, their solutions, is your number one mission.

Regular Meetings. An annual review or a bi-annual review, even a quarterly review is too infrequent to add meaning for either of you. Meet weekly, in person.  Obviously this has to be limited to direct reports, if you lead a large organization.

Document your meetings. Nothing is more destructive to a relationship than failing to remember the conversation. Nothing communicates disinterest than failing to remember the important details you discussed, agreed to, assigned.

I use the wiki Basecamp to document conversations, create follow-up to-do’s and timelines, keep everyone’s memory clear. Even mine. Even when it’s a conversation with myself.  That keeps your time and attention focused on accomplishments, not resolving misunderstandings.

Sit at their desks. There’s no better way to build a better understanding of their challenges, their day, their rewards, than to regularly sit at their desk and do their job. Nothing shows you care more than helping in this way.  Granted you can’t sit and do everyone’s job. But, there are many you can, without threatening to burn the office down.

All of these deserve discussion in greater detail.

But, the most important point is the 2:1 ratio. Listen. Listen and you’ll hear what you need to do.

You’ll lead by example, too. You’ll volunteer to listen, to hear their dreams, their needs, their ideas and solutions. Sure, you’ll hear their problems and have to  slice some cheese to offer with their whine. You’ll find out about their families, their child’s first recital or first home run, their parents health issues. You’ll volunteer to be a human. And you’ll create a movement of volunteers…who maybe, just maybe, input word-of-mouth, WOM, WOW into the DNA of their creation. And that’s when your business starts its journey towards sustainability.

Listen to your employees volunteers. They’re important.

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About the author: Zane Safrit’s passion is small business and the operations excellence required to deliver a product that creates word-of-mouth, customer referrals and instills pride in those whose passion created it. He previously served as CEO of Conference Calls Unlimited. Zane’s blog can be found at Zane Safrit.

The post Listen to Your Employees appeared first on Small Business Trends.

Tell them the story of how social media will make the following numbers go up for their business:

• leads
• conversion rates
• customer accounts
• sales per customer
• revenues,
• profits
• cash-flow

Then tell these CEO and CFOs the story of how social media will make these numbers go down:

• customer churn
• customer acquisition costs,
• marketing costs
• advertising costs
• employee turnover
• hiring costs.

That’s the story they want to read in every internal report. The numbers in those reports contain the language that measures, and communicates,  their success in creating and leading their brand to success.

Social media’s true literary beauty is the story of its impact on profits and cash-flows and sustainable businesses, on customer churn and conversion rates, revenue growth and employee engagement as measured with lower employee turnover and hiring costs.

Words like tweets, re-tweets, trackbacks, comments, links, rss feeds, feed readers, news alerts, community members, community forums, conversations, vigilantes, blogtrolls, stalkers, spambots … organic SEO, are the words of an unintelligible language outside the echo chamber of social media experts.

And therein lies the rub. An industry built around the power of conversation, authentic conversation … speaks only in its own language.

The desired audience, client executives who need the power of social media, ask:

• What do these verbs do?
• What does a customer do when they tweet? Why should I care?
• A customer uttered? Uttered, what? Who heard them?
• Were they in their pajamas?*…
• Oh wait that’s what you wear when you blog.
• Do we have a blog? We don’t? Shouldn’t we?

* Sure, it’s a bad cliche’, for us, for those who’ve experienced what social media can achieve.

But, social media presentations rarely, if ever, answer those questions with stories that connect customer conversations with cash-flow, tweets with conversion rates, online comments with revenues, rss feeds with lower hiring costs and reduced employee turnover.   Or, in honoring the principle, of openness and transparency,  show how they connect indirectly, inevitably or in some cases, rarely.

Small business CEOs and CFOs are hungry, anxious, for the power of social media. Social media is the great leveler for small business competing against global brands with an ad budget greater than all the revenues of a small business. True, authentic, conversations with small business and our customers are a naturally occurring phenomena. Social media would easily, genuinely, accelerate the spread of those messages.

Social media consultants, for all that is good and right in your world…(ok, a bit dramatic) connect those conversations with cash-flow and customers, prospects and conversion rates, hiring costs and employee turnover. That’s the language the CEOs and CFOs of millions of small business speak every day. And, they’re the ones who will sign your checks when you speak their language.

* * * * *

About the author: Zane Safrit’s passion is small business and the operations excellence required to deliver a product that creates word-of-mouth, customer referrals and instills pride in those whose passion created it. He previously served as CEO of Conference Calls Unlimited. Zane’s blog can be found at Zane Safrit.

The post Social Media: Speak our Language, Please appeared first on Small Business Trends.

What’s it cost to create a job…or to save a job? What is the ROI for that job?

Members of the US Senate voted against a $14 billion loan for the Big Three automakers.

There are roughly 830,000 jobs tied directly to the Big Three car makers. 230,000 workers are directly employed by the Big Three. Another 600,000 are employed directly by the auto parts supplier industry. – NY Times.

The message with this vote was that…these 830,000 jobs are not worth $16,000 +/- each to keep. ($14 billion/830,000 jobs = $16,000 +change.)

The  230,000 jobs directly with each Big Three car maker are not worth $61,000 each. Too expensive, they say. Where would we see a return on that investment?

However, in Tennessee, brand new jobs in auto manufacturers are worth $250,000 each.  Volkswagen received upwards of $500 million in assistance from the state of Tennessee and local governments to build a plant which would create 2000 jobs at the plant.

Volkswagen says the plant will cost them $1 billion to build. For them, the cost for each of these 2000 jobs at this plant is…$500,000 each.

That’s a total of $750,000 combined to create one job.  What’s the ROI for these jobs? The bigger question may be: How do they generate it?

Chattanooga Chamber of Commerce

Chattanooga Times Free-Press

You could do it cheaper, couldn’t you? Couldn’t you create or save a job for less than this?

What would it cost to add or save one job?

How much additional cash-flow would you need?

Where do you find that extra cash?….revenues added, costs reduced, equity investments, assets sold, liabilities retired, additional bank loans, corporate bonds …

How much will it cost to create the plan, connect it with their goals and your company goals? ( Those two are simpatico, right? )

How much will it cost your existing employees? Will pay raises be frozen, incentives be lowered? Will more career opportunities be generated?

How much new equipment will be needed?

How much of your time will be required? Do you have the time? Or, will you sacrifice time from your current tasks? If the latter, add that to the cost.

What’s your ROI? Not as a percentage, but…what will be returned on your investment? A career for one person, an opportunity for several, growth for all in your company, bonuses, health insurance as a paid benefit?

What is the ROI for your community from this job you created or saved? Safety, security, better schools, better restaurants, better roads, a future for your community?

How would your company measure the loss of but one job? What about your community?

And, at what point does it matter? Consider the ratio one layoff : one company….That’s odd, we say. 10 : 10…That’s not good, we say. 100 from 100….? As a nation, we’re way past the ratio of 100 : 100. 100 jobs lost at 100 companies.  We’re sailing past 1000′s : 1000′s.

If you’ve read this far, you are either aggravated at the time wasted or hopeful I have some answers. I don’t. At least, quantitatively.  I could, though. But it doesn’t seem necessary does it? The numbers seem self-evident. You can find new numbers with every morning’s news.

I’ll say this, though, small business can create jobs more effectively, more cost-effectively, and generate the higher ROI as compared to the plans of big business, domestic or international, working with government, local or national.

We all have to be clear, now, in our answers to this question:  What’s the ROI to create or save one ? For the employee, our company, our community…yes, our country.

What do you say? What’s a job worth? What rate of return is required?

Our answers create the solution and the plan to move out of this recession.

* * * * *

About the author: Zane Safrit’s passion is small business and the operations excellence required to deliver a product that creates word-of-mouth, customer referrals and instills pride in those whose passion created it. He previously served as CEO of Conference Calls Unlimited. Zanes blog can be found at Zane Safrit.

The post Jobs: What’s the ROI to Create or Save One? appeared first on Small Business Trends.

Thank goodness the election’s over, right? Sheesh. But still, we’ve got the economy yet to hit bottom, banks still needing money (I guess to keep lobbying…), more banks needing money and now more countries needing money. Some of our mortgages are so under water they’re surfacing in China. And they’re sinking China judging by China’s own need for bailing out their economy.   We’ve got a couple of wars going on. And Christmas is coming around the corner, though I haven’t seen any ads yet. (That’s something to be thankful for as we approach Thanksgiving.)

And then there’s college football, pro football is interesting now. NBA just started and college basketball starts in a couple of weeks.

And I’ve lost track of Britney, Lindsay, Paris, those skinny twins…

And then there’s this social media thing with blogs, twitter, YouTube, Utterli, Blip.fm, microblogs, podcasts, tumblr, squidoo, online social communities. There’s ning and rss feeds and news alerts. There’s viddler, oovoo, hulo…something, there’s plurk and twhirl and friendfeed, facebook and myspace, emails…(And I’m too distracted to link to any of them. You’ll have to…google all of them. That’s more distraction for you. You’re welcome.)

Oh. And did you say you’re running a business with meetings and reports and challenges. Did we say challenges? What are you doing to keep your employees informed? Your customers informed? And how are you keeping cash-flows flowing…THAT way…and where’s the new product coming out. What’s happening with that employee? Did you miss that meeting? Of course you did, you’re reading this post. Innovation, anyone? No? Ok. Well, did you notice your marketing budget, plan, thingy isn’t working and your CMO keeps talking in vaguer and vaguer terms and he hasn’t kept a meeting with you, in the past 3 months, which coincidentally is a shorter period than the period of declining results from his marketing efforts.

No? You’re too distracted.

Now, that I’ve described in less than 500 words a day in your life and your life is similar to mine and millions of others….let me share some tips with you that I’ve found (if followed…) help me stay focused. Focus, please.

1. Plan Ahead – daily. I plan each day the night before. It’s a simple plan. 3-5 things I want to get done that next day. 1-2 lines each. I usually handwrite it in a notebook.

2. Plan Ahead – weekly. I plan each week, too. I update it every 3-4 days. I review the results each week to make sure nothing’s dropped and to plan for the next week.

3. Go to bed early. Seriously. It’s a marathon we’re running here, people. A rested mind and body are a clear and energetic and positive and consistent pair of tools to work with. All other tools effectiveness depends on these two working together. They work better, and better together, when rested.

4. Eat lunch. Seriously. It’s the peak period for digestive power. It settles the morning’s frenzy. You think calmer on a full belly. Patience is higher there, too. You also sleep better with a big lunch and a light dinner. See previous point.

5. Go home on time. Too many problems arise from a tired mind. Go home, kiss the spouse, play with the kids. Be happy. Relax. There’s when the solutions start popping up. Problems tend to vanish when they’re not fed with our attention. In their place, come solutions.

6. Exercise. For goodness sakes, exercise. A. Do it because it’s healthy. B. Do it because you want to see your kids grow up. C. Do it because the brain works better in coordination with the body and some adrenaline. I’m talking 30-45 minutes on a regular basis giving the effort you can. Some days I run hills. Other days, I walk those same hills. I call it a run either way. I take what the body gives.

6. Read email once a day. Do us all a favor. Stop encouraging us to send email. If it’s important, people call. Or they’ll IM you.

7. Don’t reply to emails immediately. Wait. Either you’ll sense it’s urgency or you won’t. If you do, then you’ve had time to prepare a more thoughtful response. If it’s not, you haven’t wasted time.

8. Put your phone on DND. Turn off your cellphone. Not all day, just for an hour or two.

9. Block your time. Work on a project for 30 minutes. Then move to the next project. A. it keeps your mind fresh. B. you’re making progress, albeit in baby steps, but still progress. C. you’re not creating imaginary obstacle in your head. D. instead you’re systemticall, consistently, breaking down big projects into little 30-mnute projects.

10. Take a break regularly. Breaks keep my mind fresh.

12. Treat Twitter the way you treat email. Hit it, then turn it off. Focus your tweets on adding value. (I’m still learning that one.)

13. Create DND periods for your self. Tell your staff/family not to disturb you for an hour. Interruptions are not innovations. And soon, you’ll find they’re more self-reliant and you’re more productive. That self-reliancy thing you’ll see develop makes them more valuable to you and to themselves.

14. Keep a routine. Whatever it is, keep it. It frees the mind to focus on more important things.

15. Seek help. Yes. That’s right. You need help, my friend. Join a peer advisory board. The best are the Tab Boards and Peersight Online.

16. Buy a faster computer. There are great deals out there, now. And faster computers gets more done, faster. That makes you happy. A happy you makes your family happy.

17. Take an offline weekend. Don’t read email, don’t read blogs, don’t answer your cellphone, don’t skype or twitter. Turn it off. I’m always surprised at the solutions and ideas that come at the end of one of these.

18. Tell your spouse you love them. There’s something about doing that that just makes me more focused. Maybe it’s the contentment of making her smile. I don’t know. Try it. Tell me I’m wrong. And tell your kids, too. Your pets, too, for that matter. ( Tell them you love them, not that I’m wrong.)

19.  Pick one or two of these. Try them for a week. See what happens. Adjust them to fit your needs.

Confession: Some of these I do very regularly, some pretty often. Some are on lists of others and after I read those others’ lists, I realized I was doing them, too. (Pretty cool.)  These aren’t exclusive to me. They’re just what I realized work for me, when I do them.

I blogged a list of Tip to Stay Focused in Tough Times. (Disclaimer: it’s a shameless self-promotion. But…I’m focused. )

Anyway. We’ve got to go. Too many things to do: meetings, reports, problems to solve,  twitters to tweet, utters to utterli, tumbles to tumblr, stumbles to stumbleupon, delicious, facebook, gmail, linkedIn, change my status or a tree will fall in the forest and no one will be there to witness it….

Oh wait. Now, we can focus. Ahhhh. Life is simpler, life is good.

* * * * *

About the author: Zane Safrit’s passion is small business and the operationsí excellence required to deliver a product that creates word-of-mouth, customer referrals and instills pride in those whose passion created it. He previously served as CEO of Conference Calls Unlimited. Zanes blog can be found at Zane Safrit.

The post 19 Tips to Bring Focus appeared first on Small Business Trends.